There have been a number of intersections between American literature andâ€œcoolâ€ subcultures in the latter half of the twentieth century. From theBeats of the 1950s to the poetry slams of the 1980s and 1990s, literaryscenes have often developed symbiotically with countercultural artisticcommunities.However, the deeper connections between twentieth-century literature andthe coevally developing American (and subsequently global) attitude ofcoolness remain largely unexplored. Social historian Peter Stearns crucially reconfigures the chronology ofAmerican coolness by tracing its development to the 1910s and 20s.Stearnsâ€™s analysis traces the origins of coolness in a reaction against aVictorian social culture that encouraged exaggerated emotional response.But coolness is more than an emotional valence. It is also both a metricof approbation and a performative stance that positions a subject inrelation to a dominant cultureâ€™s standpoint on matters of aesthetics andpolitics. In other words, coolness is a certain kind of epistemologicalposture; it is a performance of oneâ€™s relationship to knowledge. In thisaspect, the concept of coolness begins to intersect with Pierre Bourdieuâ€™sdefinition of habitus, a â€œsystem of durable, transposable dispositions,â€that generates cultural practices. Literature is an especially fruitful site for exploring this issue, sincecoolness possesses such a significant textual dimension. For instance,coolness tends to be marked by a tendency towards laconicism. It is oftencharacterized by a specialized argot, one that demonstrates the subjectâ€™scool attitude. Additionally, expressions of cool tend to rely on therhetorical device of irony, a strategy that aligns them with LindaHutcheonâ€™s definition of postmodern fiction. This panel will seek to explore new directions in scholarship on therepresentations or manifestations of coolness in literary texts. It willeschew papers that concentrate solely on established â€œcool literature,â€such as the Beat poetry, and it will also not be limited to Americanliterature specifically. Instead, the panel will examine coolness as aglobal phenomenon by emphasizing theoretical or historical approaches todevelopment of this particular attitude.

Possible paper topics include:

â€¢ coolness and postmodernismâ€¢ coolness as a mechanism of cultural assimilationâ€¢ the relationship between coolness and powerâ€¢ Victorian â€œcoolâ€â€¢ coolness and the Harlem Renaissanceâ€¢ coolness and irony.â€¢ connections between coolness and poststructural literary theoryâ€¢ trans-Atlantic or postcolonial coolness